


Crazy But It's True

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Team Fortress 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:23:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A slow-burning exploration of Sniper/Spy. This time it's not big dangers that bring them together, but the little ordinary things...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Know What It Is

**Author's Note:**

> Odd numbered chapters (like this one) are from Sniper's POV, and even numbered chapters will be from Spy's.

Until the bookstore he was just a pain in my arse—pain in everyone’s, I mean, but a pain was all he was to me. Bookstore was where it started…

There’s a city about an hour out from the town of Teufort, and by city standards it ain’t much, but next to Teufort it’s a fair gleaming metropolis. Hardly ever anything to go to the city for that I can’t get in town, or by mail order. Hardly ever anything I need the supply trains don’t bring or I can’t go out and find. But I’ve been reading the same two novels the last five years and my Paterson’s about to disintegrate on me and when there’s no shooting going on, well sometimes a man gets bored. And the city’s got a bookstore.

I picked up a mystery that I couldn’t recall reading before, even if it was an old one, and a book of horror stories—bit trash, maybe, but good for a laugh if it doesn’t turn out to be good for a fright—and Gulliver’s Travels, which I had read, or at least begun, back when I was in school. Anyway, Swift’s a good read, ought to hold up for a few rereads. Hope as much, anyway, can’t hardly keep a library in the van. I try to travel light, but I like to have something to read on hand.

I was backing up to let a lady through when I backed right out of the aisle and right into someone else.

“Sorry! My fault there,” I turned to help—no sense in being impolite to folks, and they may not feel it as keen as in Teufort, but half the folks in the city are just looking for a reason to want the mercs out. City’s not far from the warehouses and factories we sometimes get sent to fight over, after all. Never hurts to be nice, try and win a point in the company’s favour.

“No, I should have been—“

We stood at the same time, both of us holding onto the book I’d knocked out of his hand, and both of us realizing at once that we weren’t on the same team. Neither one the type to let much show, but I could still see the faint traces of surprise on him give way to a more familiar sneer.

“Well well. So the bushman is literate after all.” He smirked, and if it wasn’t for the voice in the back of my head reminding me to play nice in front of the townies, I’d have wiped it clear off his mug.

“Maybe I apologized too soon.” I rolled my eyes at him, let go of his book.

He tucked it under his arm with the others. “Hm. I didn’t expect to see you here. Out amongst the civilized people of the world.”

“I can be just as civilized as the next bloke.” I said.

He just laughed. We were both headed for the counter, though. I figured we’d both be out of the shop soon, and on our separate ways.

“Go on.” I waved him forward to the single register. Still couldn’t say why. Pure contrariness, maybe, just to prove I was polite.

“Merci.”

“Just quit dawdling and buy your fancy French books.” I huffed—I can be polite, but that man’s enough to test the patience of a saint, way he practically lounges even when he’s walking, just making an obstacle of himself.

“As if this backwater hamlet sells books en francais.” He moaned to me, like I cared about listening to his complaints, but I guess I did listen, anyway. “And I cannot bear to read the way a book is mangled when it is translated into English. Mark Twain.”

“Really?”

“I enjoy satire.” He shrugged. “If there is one great American writer, then Mark Twain is he.”

He placed his books on the counter, the leatherbound Twain and a cheap pulp paperback that he attempted to keep out of my line of sight.

“Is that a spy novel?” I grinned, putting my own books down at my end of the counter.

“I am picking it up for a… teammate.” He frowned, before his eyes lit on the copy of Gulliver’s Travels. “Swift?”

“I enjoy satire.”

I couldn’t tell you if he had the good grace to blush, but I reckon he looked as chastised as any spy’s ever looked.

“Maybe when you finish Swift and I finish Twain, we should trade.”

“Careful, sounds almost like treason.”

“Economics.” He shook his head. “I will still kill you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if I see you around we will, and maybe if I don’t see you, you can, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Of course.” He finished paying and picked up his bag. “I forgot who I was talking to. I don’t relish borrowing anything from a practitioner of… Jarate.”

He shuddered so theatrically at the word that I couldn’t help laughing, and he glared at me, but he also didn’t leave the shop as fast as he could have.

“Maybe I’ll kill you.” I said, shouldering past him at the door.

“Maybe you will.” He caught up to me, walking casually along in the same direction and sounding almost criminally unconcerned. “It would be a magnificent stroke of luck for you.”

“I’ve done it before.” I growled.

He just shrugged, like it was a statement of opinion instead of an honest fact, and walked right alongside me all the way out to the little downtown public parking lot.

“Can I help you?”

“Not necessary, thank you.” And if anything the spook looked even more pleased with himself.

He stopped at the silvery little convertible parked next to my battered old Land Rover.

“Flashy, but what have you got under the hood?”

“This is a Deesse.” He drew himself up. “The engine may be four-cylinder, but this was the model to win Monte Carlo two years ago. She has independent hydraulic suspension. Whatever the goddess lacks in power, she more than makes up for in other arenas. She reaches and maintains high speeds on any surface and she offers the smoothest ride you could ever dream of. Please, do not mistake style for ‘flash’. Style, the Deesse possesses. Flash is tacky.”

He ended on one of those sneers he seems to like—probably practices them in front of the mirror. And honestly, I suppose I was impressed—I hadn’t expected him to actually know a blessed thing about the car. Figured he bought it for looks.

“And I do not live out of her.” He added.

“Nah, wouldn’t be very comfortable.” I snorted, crossing my arms and leaning back against the side of my camper. “Haven’t even got a proper backseat for inviting company to.”

“Oh, and I suppose you entertain plenty of ‘sheilas’ in that filthy van of yours?”

“Piss off.” I walked around to the driver’s side, wishing like hell I had a better comeback than ‘piss off’. Just because I could take someone to bed in my camper didn’t mean my bed saw much action, any more than owning a damn ‘Deesse’ meant the spook could win Monte Carlo.

I stowed my books up front and pretended to be busy until I saw him drive off, then I walked down to a restaurant a couple blocks away, nice enough to feel a good sight fancier than eating out in Teufort ever did—and hell, the diner in Teufort was an improvement over eating on-base, or killing, cleaning, and roasting something out in the desert—but not near so fancy that I’d have to worry about running into the Spy again.

Part of me half-hoped I might anyway, though the little lot was the closest parking unless you got lucky and someone pulled away from the kerb as you pulled up, so… I mean, not like he’d bother driving if he was going to eat there. It wasn’t a greasy spoon, but the city had a couple restaurants nicer. Up until he got the last word, it had been… well, fun. It had been fun riling the bloke up and letting him poke at me. A verbal version of our usual fights. Not quite polite, maybe, but we weren’t hacking away at each other.

And when I’m not fighting for my life… Well, I guess when I’m not fighting for my life, I’m free to notice things about him I don’t usually look for. The way his suit fits, the way his eyes light up at a challenge, if only a conversational one. Things I always try not to notice about a bloke, for the same reason I’ve never had a lady around the bed in my camper, for the reason I avoid most people, reason I haven’t much looked back since I left home…

I didn’t love him after the bookstore, I didn’t even like him. But I wanted to be around him a bit more, outside of trying to gut each other.


	2. Only Know I Never

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next part of the story, in Spy's POV.

The working week went on as usual, and during work hours I did not think about the weekend, not much. Certainly not about the weekend before in particular, what I did or who I spoke to. During work hours, I am far too preoccupied with work.

Even Friday night, I didn’t think back much on the last weekend—after all, why reminisce about something that happened nearly a week ago? It was nothing very important. I’d gone into the city—small and unfashionable and rather dull, but better than the dreary mud-stain that is Teufort, and all those angry dirt farmers… I’d eaten dinner at an acceptable little Italian-American restaurant. I’d run into the enemy Sniper—in a bookstore, of all places—and nothing very remarkable passed between us.

No.

That is not true. Just seeing him there was remarkable. His selection impressed me—not greatly, but a little. And it is not as though he became attractive to me in that instant. Before then, I knew…

I knew that I had a specific type. Not the type I would have chosen, if one could choose what is attractive. I knew I liked my men long and lean and rough around the edges, and I accepted that changing my tastes was not so simple a thing as I might have hoped, when I tried pursuing only the types I thought I should want. Blame it on my sexual awakening at the hands of a Gascogne stableboy—well, not at his hands, much to my regret, but at least the idea of his hands. I always had a yen for someone perhaps a couple years my senior, who lived by his own sweat. A preference that evolved somewhat over the years, as I chased down bigger and more thrilling dangers, and pursued only soft and pretty and young things that failed to excite me.

So yes, I knew before that weekend that the Sniper—that either team’s Sniper—held at least the potential to be… physically interesting to me. Still, one doesn’t get to where I am by giving in to every little whim, and from what I knew of my teammate, there was no spark between us. From what I knew of the two of them, I developed something of a low opinion—of Australians, of snipers, take your pick.

I just didn’t know enough.

Still, better not to think about bedding an enemy, when that is not the object of the mission, even if he does possess an intellect under that filthy, weather-beaten exterior. Even if I do like a challenge. A challenge is all very good, but it’s not as though we would really, well, like each other.

Friday night, I left the confines of the base. I didn’t feel like going out anywhere, particularly, but I didn’t feel like the headache the weekend always brings—Friday night often turns into something of a… a ‘booze-up’, someone called it once. It is never anything palatable, and it always comes with too much noise. If pressed, I may admit to caring about the welfare of my teammates, but on Friday nights, I cannot say that I like them.

I slipped out through a gap in the fence, to my customary parking spot to the left of the base, to smoke, and to watch the stars come out. It was a clear night. They all are.

I spotted the Sniper down towards the RED side of the field, also outside the fence. After a moment of reflexive tension, we both relaxed. To my surprise, he ambled across the span of desert that separated us.

“Heading out?” He nodded to me—or rather, to my car.

“Only as far as this.” I smiled with a shrug.

I’d had to sell my old ID19, when I took on the long-term contract with BLU, but the very generous signing bonus they cut was enough to buy this little beauty… the ’67 Citroen DS convertible. The Goddess is more powerful than her little sister, anyway, and the redesign for the series two makes her even more attractive. Well, that much may be only my opinion, but that her engine is better than the ID, that is a cold, hard fact. I hadn’t been able to afford the Deesse when I bought the Idee. I bought it in black, because black was what the dealer had. The Deesse, though… The powder blue was a nod to my new employer, but in the right light, she shines like silver…

I watched the Sniper roll a cigarette in one hand, before patting down his pockets.

“Piss.”

“Need a light?” I smirked, lighter already in hand.

“Yeah, guess so. Thanks.”

“The least I could do, after dominating you all week.” I held the flame out. He scowled at me, but he accepted the light all the same.

He peered at the car a little more. “Guess she does have a backseat. Tiny one.”

“Well, even were it practical for such assignations, I would never do that to my seats.”

He laughed. I smiled.

“She really go all that fast?”

“According to the factory, a hundred and sixty-five kilometers per hour. I’ve never attempted it, but if you want to race…”

He laughed again, a quick loud bray. “Yeah, yeah that’s a thing that’s gonna happen.”

“Well…” I could feel this strange loosening somewhere in my chest, in that split-second before I abandoned all caution to the wind. “If you want a demonstration, I will be happy to give you one.”

I opened the passenger-side door, and after a moment, he nodded, grinding his cigarette butt into the dust and climbing in. I put the top down and slipped into the driver’s seat. Normally I keep it up—any time there is so much as a breeze out here, the dust goes everywhere, and I do like to be careful of her interior, even if I can do nothing for the outside except to have her washed and waxed every weekend.

“If we are going to do this, we may as well do it right.” I grinned at him. I hit the gas, and within fifteen seconds, we were going a hundred kilometers an hour, in big sweeping circles through the desert out past the two little forts.

He was holding onto his hat with one hand, onto the door with the other, and most of my focus was of course on what I was doing, but I could hear his occasional whoops of pure enjoyment, the loud, clear sound of his laugh, and every so often, I may have joined in with my own.

I pulled back into my spot after I’d burned more gas than I really needed to doing nothing useful. After I’d spent more time than I really needed to with a man who was ostensibly my enemy. He was still chuckling softly when he climbed out of the car.

“You win.” He patted the door as it swung shut. “She’s a smooth ride, all right.”

I nodded, tried to affect a superior smirk just a little too late. There was really nothing I could say… Or, there must have been, but I couldn’t think of it. I’d had a good time… I probably should not have.

“You show her off that often?” He asked.

“Not like that.” I gave the driver’s-side door a little stroke of my own. “It was certainly fun.”

“More fun than giving your teammates rides into town.”

“Oh, they do not ride in her.” I said, again, too quick to overcome my own stupid reflexes… I could see the surprise on his face when I admitted it. “The Engineer goes into Teufort more regularly than I do, and the Medic drives… and someone else has a car around the back of the base, too, the Pyro or the Demoman or someone… Your own counterpart drives an even uglier van than you do. The only one who has ever asked me is the Scout, and the boy wears cleats. Aside from that… you know, no one needs me for that.”

“Ah. Well. Probably shouldn’t tell the Scout you gave me a go, then.”

“Probably not, no.” I coughed, feeling my face heat. Still, between the balaclava and the falling darkness, it’s not as though he could have seen.

He rolled another cigarette, and I lit it for him without comment.

“Nice night.” He gestured to the sky, awkward.

“Yes. Who knew you could see so many stars?”

“Aw, that’s nothing. Southern hemisphere’s where you get really good skies.”

“You are just saying that because you’re biased.” I smirked, moving around the front of the car to lean on the hood.

He joined me. “No, really. Most beautiful nights I’ve ever seen have all been in the outback. The red sunsets and the stars and the planets—“

“The planets?”

He nodded. “Seen most of ‘em from out in the desert. The Orionid meteor shower, about three and a half years back.”

I nodded dumbly, and the two of us leaned back on the cooling hood of my car, in the cooling night, while he talked about the stars and the outback, and I watched the way the light of the waning moon outlined his profile, sharp and bright.

“Tomorrow night, my team is projecting old silent movies on the back wall.” I smiled and shook my head. “It is… it is all very silly, of course, but… You know. I’m sure over on RED they do silly things for morale as well?”

“Sometimes. Poker, usually. Course, our walls are all darker and rougher. Suppose we could hang a sheet out, but I don’t know if anyone’s even got a projector on our base. Nah, guess we must… I mean, every time they send us someplace new, we watch one of them filmstrips. Why?”

I felt small, stupid, suddenly cold from the inside out. I pressed on, anyway. “Just mentioning. Only, that there would really be nothing stopping you from watching if you felt like it, from this side of the fence.”

“You inviting my team to spoil movie night for your mates?”

I wasn’t, of course I wasn’t. Nothing near that. But… Well…

“It might be a laugh, if they did. I wasn’t planning on attending, anyway.” I shrugged.

“Yeah. I don’t join in team nights more’n half the time, myself.”

“I suppose,” I laughed, forcing my tone to be casual as I made another stab at it. “I suppose that I could watch the movies from this side of the fence as well. The Deesse is more comfortable than the benches and folding chairs they drag out. Pretend it is a drive-in movie.”

“Sure. Peel out when my team shows up to heckle the screen—er, the wall. Leave us all hacking on your dust.” He grinned.

“So don’t invite them to wreak havoc this weekend. You can still come along, if you like.”

I watched his throat move as he swallowed, watched him think through the long pause in our conversation.

“Don’t think that’s such a hot idea.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Too close to friendship.” He straightened, stood away from the car—away from me. “I should turn in. I got stuff to do in the morning. You know how it is.”

“Monday, then.” I mimed tipping a hat. “I will see you. You will not see me.”

“Better make sure I don’t hear you, either. Or smell you coming. ‘Cause I’ll paint the deck with your insides if I do.” He chuckled and waved, before walking back towards the RED base.

I leaned back, felt myself deflating. For the best, of course. What would I be setting myself up for with him if he did not refuse? I would keep up my winning streak with him, then, on the field. I could never have anything intimate—not with any of the men out here, really—and it was foolish to even chase after friendship. Friendship wasn’t what I wanted. At least I could have my record when it came to the war.

And on Saturday I could take my car into the city and when they washed and waxed her, I could have the carpets and the upholstery cleaned, to wipe any lingering trace of him out of her.


	3. You've Started Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the Sniper's POV for a chapter. The slow burn drags on.

Tuesday I didn’t see anything out of the corner of my eye—almost never do, if I’m honest. Not much peripheral vision to be had as long as I’m hunched over my scope, and even when I’m not…

I didn’t hear him coming, either—and again, my record at that’s not stellar, but with all the noise on the battlefield any given day, don’t know what you could expect.

Tuesday, though, the wind was on my side. A sudden explosion down below sucking the air through the window I had staked out, carrying with it the tell-tale cigarette smoke. And…

“Is that fucking cologne?” I asked, rather conversationally considering I had the bloke pinned to the floor with my forearm across his throat.

“Aftershave.” He gasped, and I took a second to look at him. Guess I normally don’t. If I catch him, I kill him. But he’d managed a fairly close shave—closer than any of the rest of us, reckon.

“Ponce.” I snorted. I mean, and I was aware of the irony, but still. Well, way I see it, even if I am a pooftah, and that’s not something I admit to, at least I’m still a man about it. He could bed every woman from here to Timbuktu and that don’t change the fact that one of us is wearing Italian loafers and fancy aftershave in a warzone, and it isn’t me.

“Oaf.” Another gasp, and he shoved at me with the arm I didn’t have twisted up over his head.

“Bloody Spook.” I squeezed down on his wrist until he dropped his knife.

“Filthy Bushman.” He was grinning anyway, even as his left hand scrabbled uselessly against my arm and his right didn’t do much of anything.

“I’m gonna enjoy this.” I transferred his right wrist to my own right hand, even as my forearm stayed against his throat, giving him just enough air to stay conscious and not nearly enough to fight back with any results. Freed up my left hand to go for my kukri.

He snarled at me in French—French, I guess, but at least not English, spitting obvious insults and writhing around, throwing his weight up against me and clawing at me in desperation, and I drove my knee against his leg, pressing him down.

“I’m gonna enjoy it a lot.” I promised, grinning down at him and tracing the tip of the blade down the side of his face.

He stilled, chest heaving, eyes almost manic, and I couldn’t tell if his teeth were bared in a smile or a grimace the way the wild stare seemed to want to egg me on.

He hadn’t killed me once on Monday after all—not because I’d caught him, either, but I guess he’d been on Truckie worse than usual, mad and reckless. Whatever got into him then was still driving him on Tuesday, is all I could guess.

Still, we weren’t friends… Awkward as things got Friday last, with us accidentally stumbling into a sort of friendly conversation, it didn’t make us friends. It made us human, that’s all. A little light talking outside of work, anyone could walk into that. For all I know, the others do all the time, if they meet someone from BLU in town buying groceries or something.

Maybe things got too friendly, or almost did. Maybe we both forgot who we were and what we were doing. All that matters about Friday night is we both came to our senses. It doesn’t hurt to be neighbourly a little, but we aren’t friends and there was no reason on Tuesday not to gut him like the snake he was.

Except Friday night had been fun, maybe.

“How do you want it?” I asked, the very point of the kukri under his chin as I took the pressure off his throat, letting the blade tilt his head back without letting it slice into my own arm.

“I didn’t expect such consideration from you, Monsieur.” He mocked.

“I can be real considerate. Slit your throat, or you want to take one to the gut?”

“Not the throat.” He winced.

“Sure? It’s faster.”

“I know, but I always feel it when I respawn…”

I shrugged. He had a point, there… some injuries linger, even if it’s only mental, no matter how fast they really kill you.

“Customer’s always right.” I joke, one hand grabbing at his mask—not to take it off, but I figure the way he fought before, holding him still won’t do a thing. Hand on the mask, though, and he wouldn’t dare try and move too much, just for fear of it coming off.

Sure enough, he froze, taking in a sharp breath. “Don’t—“

“Don’t you worry,” I murmured, shifting over, giving myself enough room to drive home good and hard. “I’m just gonna kill ya.”

I stabbed down, ‘til I couldn’t have been deeper in him, and he grunted, jerking once. I stayed where I was, as he breathed harder, fast and shallow, then just jerkily, dark blood bubbling over his teeth, then not at all. I probably didn’t have to wait, but in the past I’ve run him through and taken him for dead, only to get a knife in the back the second my guard dropped.

This time I didn’t have to worry—had the wrong damn watch or something, for starters, and I was holding onto him the whole time just as a precaution. Hell, maybe it was the bloody Dead Ringer anyway. But he didn’t pop up from anywhere else while I held his dying body down, and when I drew my kukri out, I wiped it on his jacket to clean the blade off.

“Good colour on ya, mate.” I chuckled, addressing his corpse.

It lingered behind me for a while when I went back to shooting, but that’s hardly anything new. They always stick around for a bit, and they always respawn, and they always come back for revenge eventually, or go after your mates. Reckon I do the same, before respawn. Sit around looking stupid or mildly disturbing, ‘til I get teleported and revived and what-have-you.

The problem wasn’t the fight. Even having him buck and squirm under me, the fight wasn’t ever the problem. I had survival to think about. It was later, it was when nothing was proving an immediate threat, that I thought about having someone else’s body close to mine. His was the body I thought about, Tuesday night not sleeping, when I pictured things that had never happened and never would.

Wednesday I put a nice little bullet through the back of his head as he was trying to run our intel back to his base, after a quick series of massive explosions took out half of each of our teams and left the case just sitting there attached to the BLU Scout’s arm.

I did it because it was my job, sure, but I also did it to prove I could. To prove I wouldn’t always be thinking about wrestling him to the ground for a kiss, about rutting against each other like animals, about any of the pictures that had flashed unbidden through my mind the night before. I did it because it’s what a professional would have done, and if I’m anything, I’m that. Even if I’m a sick, perverted degenerate who can’t think about girls like a healthy man, who can’t help wanking off to half a memory of his worst enemy even… Whatever else I am and whatever else I do, at least I can say I’m still a professional.


	4. Hold On Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy ups the game.

Avoiding him did nothing. I hoped on Tuesday when I tripped up that losing to him would reinstill some of my old rancor, but then he had to go and be… well, ‘nice’ is a funny word for it, but I could think of no better one. Instead of painting me with urine, he gave me at least a little choice in the matter of my death. I wanted him to be a monster, or at least the filthy hobo I had come to expect, and instead he was… cordial.

I tried avoidance again, in case Monday had been a fluke, but Wednesday I fared no better, and once again I found myself jumping at bigger risks, just to keep my mind away from the RED Sniper.

Thursday I played to win. To murder my interest in him by force, if need be. I had already let attraction make me too bold once… too friendly. I needed to be vicious. Not even the brisk, cold efficiency of a swift backstab or a clean headshot with the Ambassador, I wanted to make him hurt, make him bleed. For Heaven’s sake, to make him think all my friendliness was part of some little game.

He didn’t sense me coming, early on on Thursday. I slid one hand around his throat like a whisper and pressed the tip of my knife to his side, between the ribs.

“Bonjour,” I whispered—tortured myself as much as the death would torture him, just by drawing so close. I could smell his sweat, so thick at the back of his neck I could practically taste the musk of him on my tongue, and the heat of his back radiated against my chest.

“Anyone ever tell you not to play with your food?” He growled, but he was caught, the rifle in his hands and no way to arm himself with something better, not before I sank the blade in.

I chuckled in his ear. “Apt enough… I suppose I am the cat and you the mouse in this little game.”

“Only this time.”

“Whatever you say, souris. Are you still thinking of escape? Don’t lie, I can hear those little grey cells working.”

“Little grey cells? You secretly Belgian?”

I dug the tip of the knife in a little, so that he could feel it even through the thick leather vest—just a little something, so that he wouldn’t know the reference had taken me aback at all.

“Moi? Belge? No more than you are a, how you say, ‘kiwi’.”

“I’m not one of those sheep-shaggers, mate.” He laughed a little, stopping short when it caused his ribcage to expand against the knife-point. “You gonna finish me off any time soon?”

“No.” I hissed, sliding the knife in and staying my hand before anything vital could be hit. I sliced through flesh, and he choked down a cry of pain, body jerking.

“Bloody fucking snake…” He gasped, and I caught him as he slumped forward.

“Yes. But you knew what I was on Tuesday. Do not complain that this treatment is unfair, mon souris. We are at war.”

His breathing went ragged, and I pulled my knife out slowly and let him crumple to the ground, roll to his back, one hand resting over the wound, pressing helpless against the seeping wet heat, slick and dark as red wine between his fingers, over the backs of mine.

I crouched over his body, his eyes burning into mine, and I made myself smile, I licked his blood from the edge of my blade as though there was nothing sickening in the act.

“Slit your… bleeding throat, next time,” He heaved. There was the old hatred in his eyes… but with it, a touch of confused betrayal. Well, good.

“And spit down it, I am sure.” I thought about doing worse, but I didn’t have the stomach… if I let him marshal his strength, he might still bleed out, but he would take me down with him. “Ah, but have I kept release from you too long?”

He made no answer, though the heat in his gaze did not waver. I could see the twitch of muscles working, the attack he hoped to mount as soon as he could control enough of himself, the gritted teeth and thin, bloodless lips—bloodless save the flecks of red-dyed spittle that sprayed down his chin, sparse tiny droplets glittering in a three-day beard. I forced a thumb into his mouth, forced his jaw open.

“Shh…” I slid the barrel of the Ambassador between his lips, my hand moving to his cheek. “Do not worry. I am only going to kill you.”

I watched his throat swallow reflexively, his hand spasm softly as he clutched and pressed at the gash along his side, his eyes flutter closed. Mine did the same, as I squeezed the trigger.

It was done. I ran, I hid, I carried out the rest of the week as usual. It would be enough… It had to be enough…

“You’re a piece of work.” I heard his voice carry across the hard cracked land, the sun setting behind us, behind the fence and the forts and the rest of our teams. Another weekend on the next horizon.

“Yes. I know it.” I did not turn to look at him. I needed no proof of my effectiveness. I had seen him hate me when I killed him slowly. I instead hunched over my Deesse and did my best to banish the memory of our joyride through the desert.

“I’m a piece of work too.” His voice was softer, and closer. Against the advice of my better angels, I turned.

“Oh?” I feigned disinterest, but not well.

It did not matter. He was looking out at the horizon, not at me. “Guess everyone in this war is, though. Would any of us be here else?”

“Perhaps not.”

He had a six pack of beer hanging from one hand. He turned to half-smile at me. “Apologize nice enough and I might let you have one.”

“Thank you, no.”

“Your pride mean that much to you?”

“It is not a matter of pride. I could say a multitude of things I did not mean, with the right incentive. But I would kill you a hundred times over if it meant avoiding a mouthful of that pallid swill.”

“Yeah. Bit weak, American stuff. Still, not the cheapest…” He pulled one from its plastic ring, popping it open and taking a swig—and making a face.

“It tastes like piss. A fact I would not know if it were not for you, so don’t think you will be getting any heartfelt apologies for anything that happens out on the battlefield.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m sorry I don’t have any vodka martinis, Mister Superspy. Sorry I haven’t got any bloody wine, Monsieur.”

“We do have beer in France, you know.”

“Yeah?” His chuckles petered out and he moved closer, to lean against the Deesse and offer the six-pack in my direction. “G’wan.”

“That doesn’t mean your American beer tastes any less like piss.”

“Fair enough. If I could get stuff from home, I would.” He let his arm drop back to his side, beers in hand.

“I… It was cruel of me, perhaps, but you understand why I cannot be sorry.”

“Sure I do. I mean, hell, we got to stop meeting like this.” He shrugged. “Reckon it all starts again Monday morning.”

“Yes.” I glanced to him again, the strong profile in the dying light, the dim hint of regret before he suddenly turned to me with an earnest kind of anguish made worse by the spectre of hope.

“I’ve got about ten pages left of Swift.”

“Really?”

“Haven’t got much of a life, outside of work.” He chuckled lamely, ducked his head. “Anyway, I—Nevermind.”

“Neither have I—there is not much life out here to be had.”

“If you wanted—That is—Aw piss…”

“Again, thank you, no.” I smirked.

He shook his head and hid a grin. “If you still want to trade, you can come by tomorrow night. I’ll be parked around back. I’m outside the fence, so… Ain’t nobody’s business but mine who drops by after hours, reckon.”

He did not say it with full conviction, but that feeling I understood. We already knew too well the penalty of making a friendship like this, after all.

“We will see. If I am not busy.” I said, trying not to sound too committed, too eager. Mentally, though… mentally I catalogued all of my books in English, what I had done with, what I could bring by to offer besides the Twain he’d seen me buy, and what might be most impressive.


	5. Doesn't Matter Where

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sniper POV

“D’you want to come in?”

“I shouldn’t.” He smiled. There was a plain brown paper sack in his arms, and I could see books up at the top. “I just… brought these by.”

“What, all of them?” I asked stupidly.

“I thought… I did not think. I’ll leave them here, bring them back whenever.” He seemed flustered, and I guess I couldn’t blame him.

I mean, this whole thing… Somehow I couldn’t hate him half so much as I should, and I guess he didn’t half hate me, either, for all we both ought to.

He set the sack of books down on the step up into the camper and turned to go.

“Wait!” I hopped down over the books, throwing an arm out to stop him going, and he turned back, arching one eyebrow in amusement, or maybe just in confusion. “Swift.”

“Ah yes. Of course.” He smirked a little, and I picked up the sack and headed back into the camper to dig around. He didn’t follow, but I found the book I meant to give him quick enough. “Thank you.”

“Yeah. You can give it back whenever.”

His hand touched mine just for a second during the transfer and just for a second more I was scared right down to the core of me he’d know. I don’t know how, just know I was sure he would. I didn’t mean to touch his hand, or let him touch mine, wherever the fault ought to lie. I was sure I never… never gazed all tender-like after him, sure I never did anything except let that one accident happen, not so different from the first time. There wasn’t anything rational that mattered. I was just certain he’d see through anything I put up.

He tucked the book under his arm and disappeared, with no indication he thought there was anything the matter with me. I went back inside, to go through the books he’d brought over, surprised at the range. Old novels, mostly, but a couple more academic-looking things, and at the very bottom, a well-worn little play bound in thick taupe paper. In heavy black type, it said ‘The Mousetrap’, and in neatly looping letters in pencil beneath, ‘You may keep it’.

The Twain was there, too, of course, but I ignored it then. Was the handwriting his? The note that slipped out of the script when I picked it up confirmed as much—‘The end of this play is one of the most closely-guarded secrets I have encountered in all my years of espionage. Anyone may learn it, of course, merely by purchasing a ticket and spending an evening at the theatre, but from the little introduction I was treated to, you would think masked men would follow you the rest of your life to keep you from ruining the ending for anyone else. I am sorry about the stain on the fifteenth page—It comes from killing a stagehand. Since I doubted there was much active live theatre in the outback, I thought you might appreciate the read.’

I did, as it happened. I was a little more intrigued by the off-hand way he wrote about murdering a stagehand. I didn’t see him out by his car all through the rest of the weekend, but I caught him before he could kill me once on Monday.

“Answer me something honestly and I might not slit your throat after all.” I said, pushing him into the wall and keeping my kukri to his neck just in case.

“Honestly? Hm… I don’t know if I can. You will have to ask me the question first.” He smirked, blowing a stream of smoke into my face.

I snatched his cigarette away and dropped it, grinding it out on the floor with the toe of my boot. “You really kill a stagehand just to get a copy of a play with a top-secret ending?”

He laughed. “I wish it was so interesting! No one has ever hired me for such a delightful triviality. The play was not my object, it was my ruse—I was an understudy. The stagehand was an assassin in his own right. I auditioned only well enough to be a second choice, a position beneath his notice. On the night before he meant to kill a theatre-going diplomat, I instead killed him. It looked like a perfect accident.”

“Yeah?”

“One of the lights. A tragic happening. I was going to poison him, but… I couldn’t resist.”

“Couldn’t resist dropping a spotlight on him?” I chuckled.

“No. I could not resist slipping some of the poison to the star I was understudying for. Not enough to kill him, of course. Just enough for him to spend a single evening being uncomfortable in hospital.” He smirked again, oily as ever. “It was a once in a lifetime chance. Why memorize all of those lines for nothing?”

We shared a laugh, and it was a long moment before he coughed, eyes flickering to the blade in my hand.

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to kill me?”

“You tell me the truth?” I slid the flat side of it against his cheek.

“Mais oui. I could not make it up.”

“Not the throat, then.” I whispered.

“Do it,” He hissed.

I was leaning in before I realized it, our foreheads touching as I thrust into him, up into one lung, where he’d drown in blood or lose his breath quicker than a gut wound would bleed him out.

It was the latter, I could tell the way his chest worked, and the wet sucking sound that came from his side and not his mouth. And again, I held onto him, just so there’d be no dropping behind any projected corpse, but again there wasn’t one.

I watched his eyes dim. It felt eerie, wrong and intimate and not like a precaution anymore. More like a vigil. I didn’t bother closing his eyes, not like they’d stay shut easy. I didn’t bother with much, really. I let him slump to the floor once he was gone and went back to work, his blood all over me, and I didn’t feel guilty for killing him—I didn’t have to, he took me out three more times that afternoon.

It didn’t stop the strangeness, the wrongness that continued to be a sick little thrill in the pit of my stomach when work was over and dinner was through and I settled into bed with one of his books in my hands.


	6. Each Moment of the Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy POV

Another week went by, of business nearly as usual. Usual, except for times when I let myself be caught, just for another slow death at his hands. Slow, at least, in comparison to some swift kills. It is a certain point of sick pride, to be the only one he kills intimately. No bullet through the skull from miles away for me, only a punishing grip and hard impalement on whatever large, utilitarian blade he’s strapped to his thigh for the day’s work. The kukri is my favourite—that awful wooden thing hurts worse, not so sharp or so clean going in—and I think his as well.

The only scars he leaves are on my psyche. I find myself more and more fascinated. I have seen him, in evenings, stretched out on a roof across the way, absorbing the last of the sun as he reads, and I wonder if he enjoys the same passages I do. I have lurked in the entry to his nest and seen him lay his gun aside to stretch, heard the crack and pop of his spine in the brief reprieves he gives himself, before settling to his task again. I whisper ‘guess who’ and sink my knife into his back, when I need the kill more than I can afford another death, but I almost prefer being caught some days. Being thrown against the wall or down on the floor with his weight upon me, our dance growing ever more Freudian in my mind. All the panting and the penetration, I suppose.

I thought I could pull back from it… that if I did not draw it out, did not torture him-- gave him fewer chances to wrestle for his life, yes, but also give myself fewer chances to take in any details of him—I thought this interest would wane. No more stroking my weapon along his cheek, no more innuendo, no more tripping him and following him down when he falls, no straddling. My professionalism makes for an occasional palliative, but it is no cure. Maybe if I thought he was some idiot, it could be, but we’ve gone past that…

I didn’t expect to see him that weekend—there are few places we both frequent, and he hardly had need of the bookstore just a week after everything I left with him. I didn’t even go into the city… maybe that was my mistake. I only needed gasoline, and I only went as far as the nearest station, where I spotted his van before I saw him.

He was at the payphone, not the pump, his van parked against the side of the building, and he seemed equally surprised to see me, though he relaxed into the same easiness we’d been fighting.

“Does your base not have telephones?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Half a smile tugged at his lips, then disappeared. “Yeah, we do, but… dunno. Don’t like my business turning into everybody’s. You understand that, though, don’t ya?”

I shrugged. “I have no one to call. But certainly I understand. Bad news?”

“Never news, exactly.” He shook his head. “Just rows. Nothing new there…”

“Well why make the call if you know that is all you can expect?”

He blinked. “They’re my parents.”

“Ah.”

“Even you’ve got parents.”

“Not since the war.” I admitted.

Disbelief and disgust flashed across his face. “What, BLU makes you cut off all contact with your family?”

“Not this war. The war.” I waved away the new surprised horror and its attendant guilt. “I will admit, it makes my profession much easier, as it would have made theirs, had they not had me, or each other. Best to avoid giving your enemies leverage like that…”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—“

“Of course you didn’t. I never told you. I never told anyone. My past is shrouded in mystery. Now stop apologizing. The wounds have long since healed over.”

The fact that I’d gone and told him now was a troubling itch, of course. It was too much, it was letting him know me too well.

“Right.” He blew out a hard sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking at the dust that blew in little eddies around our feet. His own fit the scene perfectly, mine perpetually out of place, a strange little tableau as we stood facing each other. He seemed to struggle a moment, before settling on saying nothing more.

For a moment there, without breaking the near-perfect silence that had settled around us, I had a sudden and vivid fantasy, of grabbing his hand, of pulling him to my car, of driving off as fast as I could, leaving the road for the flat clay earth of the desert… the fantasy vanished, before it could progress to anything too foolish, too intimate.

“I’ll see you around.” I said. Dull in comparison, but real life almost always is, when stacked against fantasy.

“Yeah. Course. I’m enjoying those books.” He smiled, with the desperate gratitude of a man freed from a highly uncomfortable topic of conversation, and given a door out.

“Good.”

“Think the Wittgenstein is a bit beyond me, to be honest.”

“I found it a bit of a bore.” I agreed—well, to a point I suppose I agreed. I was not really willing to admit to finding the philosophy impenetrable… “Then again, perhaps it should come as no surprise that I prefer the French philosophers.”

“Sure. Descartes and all that. I…”

“Have places to be, of course.” I nodded. “Myself as well. I shall let you go.”

I should have let him go five sentences ago, after all…


	7. Look What Has Happened

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sniper's POV.
> 
> A dam finally breaks, and mistaken conclusions drive the two further apart.

“We can’t keep doing this.” I said, and there wasn’t near enough room to pace, but I didn’t exactly want anyone walking up on this conversation, so inside the camper it was. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“You think it is my choice?” He spread his arms, glaring at me. “My fault?”

“I didn’t say that.” I held a hand out. Maybe I should have. We’d gone on weeks like this. Seeing each other outside work. Trading books and talking about them. Apologizing, for things we never should have felt guilty for. A solid month I’d armed myself with my submachine gun, even though it’s about the worst weapon in my arsenal and no good when you get set on fire, just because of him. I ought to say it’s his fault and send him packing, not spare his bloody feelings.

“Well I never wanted your friendship.” He bit the words out, ugly sneer twisting up his face.

“Yeah? Seemed pretty eager to be pals not ten minutes ago with your damn book club!”

“When we are talking about ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’, it is your damned book club!” He snarled, picking the book up and hurling it at me. “And your friendship was the last thing that I wanted! I do not want it now!”

“So how’d we end up like this, then?” I shouted, setting it down carefully on the bed.

“I don’t know.” He moaned, that brief bit of anguish giving way to heat again as he stepped up to me. “But I would rather you stab me in the belly now and let me bleed to death than hear you talk to me about friendship.”

“Yeah, maybe I oughta.” I crowded him right back. “That’s what I should be doing with enemy spies in my home.”

“Home.” He snorted. “Yes, a charming home you have here.”

“Well no one’s making you stay, sweetheart.”

The look he gave me was wounded in a way I’ve never seen on him, no matter how he dies. “I see.”

“Well?”

“Fine.” He closed his eyes. I watched him struggle with composure. “I will go. And since this ‘friendship’ is so distasteful to us both, I will murder every last ounce of goodwill you may have felt towards me. You can keep the books, or you can give them away, or you can burn them. I have lost my taste for literature. You wish to hate me?”

“I been trying to figure out how to do that for yonks. You been holding out on me?”

“I will let you despise me. I will give you a weapon to use against me, because it is the only way I can think of to end this. Is that what you want? No forgiveness? No amiable discussion and no mercy?”

I felt twitchy and hot. Mercy, he says, like it’s been any kind of mercy the way we’ve gone at each other even since becoming friends. Friends or something like it. Worst, I couldn’t think of a damn thing he could do that would drive me off, when the first slow death didn’t do the trick.

“Close your eyes.” He whispered.

I did. I waited for the pain, for him to murder me in my own home, rob my last little sanctuary of any illusion of safety and laugh in my face while I died over me being fool enough to let him in. I felt the soft touch of warm leather against my cheek and waited for the knife to slice into the other side of my face as he held me still, leave me choking on blood and grinning ear to ear.

When it came, I didn’t recognize it, not at first. No cutting, no stabbing, no cold steel edge at all. And even after the beat passed and I knew what was happening, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do in response.

He knew. It was all I could think. And how long has he known? And why was he willing to keep his mouth shut and let it slide? And no wonder he said ‘friendship’ like a dirty word, when coming from me it was.

I was leaning into him on instinct before I could make myself push him off.

“Get out.” I said.

“I thought so.” He nodded, twisted satisfaction and disgust on his face.

“I said get out!” I grabbed the front of his suit and started for the door, didn’t take more than two steps. “I didn’t let you in so you could mock me. You think I asked for this? Wanted it?”

“Mock you?” He shrieked. “I know you did not! There was never a point in our association where we should have been happy!”

“OUT!” I wrenched the door open and shoved him, and he landed in the dirt.

“What, not going to finish the job?” He sneered, picking himself up shakily. “Not going to go ahead and kill me for it like a real man?”

“Don’t you dare—Don’t you dare,” I hissed, down the step and on the ground before I even knew it and hauling him to his feet. “I’m every inch the man you are.”

“So do it. Murder me. Finish us.” His chest was heaving. I never even told myself to go for a weapon, but I was holding my kukri on him then… “Then it will all be done. Over.”

I turned, without loosing my hold, slamming him against the side of the camper and scoring his side with the kukri’s edge. “Who knows?”

“Who knows what?

“ABOUT ME!” I roared, slamming him back again, digging in. He writhed and sucked in air, pain flashing across his face. “Who did you tell?”

“As if I would tell anyone. And damn myself? Have you finally baked all the sense out of that brain of yours?”

I faltered. “Then why…? Why—why any of it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He gasped, twisting away from the blade.

“You lying snake…”

“Ah--! Make sense if you want me to understand you, then!”

“You swear you haven’t told anyone?” I dug in again, my face even with his, close enough to hear each pained gasp and feel his breath in my face.

“Why would I do that? Damn you, end me! End me and it’s over!”

I wasn’t sure what to believe, and the doubt was starting to muddy my head, but I let go of his jacket, slid my hand around the back of his neck to hold him in place.

“All right, spook. I’ll end ya. Why don’t you take this to the grave?”

I worked the kukri in deeper even as I kissed him, my tongue pushing into his mouth, more anger and hurt maybe than lust. Hard to say, it was all mixed up. I kissed him hard and tasted blood and felt him sag against me, whimpering pained moans into me.

“A peculiar act of mercy for the dying man,” He gasped, when I finally pulled away.

“Mercy?” I blinked, kukri falling as I caught his full weight. His blood seeped out too warm and wet over my arm.

“You are… killing me for kissing you,” He laughed—or tried to, only it bubbled red over his lips. His eyes were dimming, amused more than angry, and sad more than that even.

I shook my head, feeling it swim thick and heavy as I did. “For mocking me.”

“How did I mock you?”

No… Oh no. “You knew.” I knelt, lowering him down, holding him. “You knew somehow.”

He didn’t know.

He never knew.

“Oh, hell. Oh, damn me… Fuck. Why didn’t you just say something, you bloody fool? I thought you knew. You said you did it to hurt me!”

He swallowed, whole body shuddering, no comprehension in the foggy gaze that met mine.

He didn’t say it was to hurt me… he said it was so I’d hate him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, or tried to, choking too much on the words and my mouth against his skin.

He gasped and convulsed again. “Finish,”

My hand scrabbled for the kukri I’d dropped, trying to reach it without letting go of where I held his head up, cupped the base of his skull and pressed my cheek to his.

“Course I will, darling, of course I will. You’ll be back home in half a tic. Promise, love, I promise.”

I found his heart this time, the cleanest kill I think I ever gave him if it hadn’t been so late.

I held him until he was gone. Not dead, gone. Respawned. I wiped my face on my sleeve and told myself it’d only felt wet because he’d bled on me first.

He didn’t know…


	8. Never Knew That I Could

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Spy angsts over driving the Sniper away...

I avoided him assiduously after that. I couldn’t even look at him, not after what I had done and what we had said… and the kind of anger I’d gone so long without seeing even in our most vicious fights…

I did not weep over him. He was never mine to have, and I have born losses before without tears. I am not the crying kind. Even so, I mourned the death of what I did have. It was only the pale shadow of what I wanted, but still so much more than I ever should have asked for.

The rest of that weekend, I spent in my quarters, and none of the others on the team saw me, if they were even spending their time hanging about the base. When the week began, I was barely more than a ghost on the battlefield. I did my job by rote, taking on the sentries, and sometimes I was successful. Other times I was not. I no longer felt the difference.

Perhaps it was not quite accurate, to say his friendship was hateful to me. It fell short of what I came to want, but… he was still the only true friend I had had, for years. I was still happy to think of him as one, even as I tried to keep my thoughts of him from turning too carnal. I missed him. But I could not go after him again. The wounds were too raw.

My track record suffered, though not for lack of trying—well, not for lack of attempts. I had done little but go up against the RED Engineer and his buildings all week, but I had lost sleep and some small amount of will. I knew the rumours were already circulating, most revolving around some phantom lady love running off with a rival. I heard the sudden hush come over the whole of the canteen when I joined the team for dinner on Thursday—the first meal all week I’d actually appeared for.  
“Yo, Spy!” The Scout jogged in from outside—the boy had wolfed down his food and run out when the rest of us had barely begun. Well, when I had barely begun. When the others were no more than halfway through their meals.

“What?” I asked, though I made it clear I would rather kill him than listen to much of his prattle.

“You got a beef with the RED Sniper or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The BLU Sniper laughed. “He’s been going for their engineer all week. I’m the only one who’s taken their sniper out of commission since Wednesday last.”

“Yeah? Well it sure looked like he was messing with your car.” The Scout shrugged.

Lovely. Bad enough he should break my heart, if he has keyed any slurs on my sexuality into my Deesse, respawn will not even be able to find all of him. Damn it all, in the wake of this disaster, that car is all I have left.

I drew out the Ambassador, loading and polishing it carefully before getting to my feet.

“I am going out.” I announced. “To check on my car.”

“Aw yeah!” The Scout laughed.

“Stay.” I snapped. “I do not want help, nor an audience.”

He settled back with a grumble, imprecations I did not care enough to try to make out as I left the base and he complained to our team about my moods or my unreasonableness.

I slipped through the gap in the fence and over to my little parking spot. The Sniper was leaning against her, but aside from that, he seemed to be doing nothing suspicious. Still, that did not mean nothing had been done.

“What do you want?” I demanded, doing my best to scan her paint job for damage, without taking my eyes off of him.

“I been waiting to talk to you all week.” He had a book in his hands. Seemed nervous. If any harm had come to my goddess, it was very well-hidden. “You never came around. You didn’t even stab me and run.”

“I was told you were messing with my car.”

“Well. I tried waiting. I been waiting. I thought—I was just looking—I was going to leave a book for you, if you’d had a window open.”

“I don’t leave my windows open. Too much dust. And I told you, I do not want any of them back.”

“This one’s mine.” He held it out to me. “Please.”

After some deliberation, I accepted it. I had nothing else to say to him, though.

“You had better go.” I turned to leave. “My colleagues expect to see blood on the sand. Lucky for you, I am tired. I would just as soon tell them that you ran off.”

“Sure. Just—“

“Goodbye.” I told him firmly.

I did not return to the remains of my dinner—by then, surely cold—or to the questions of my team. I went to my own quarters on-base, and it was only then that I even saw what book I was holding. True, it was not one of mine. It was dog-eared, the edges all softened with age and much turning, the corners battered. The Collected Works of Elizabeth Barret-Browning.

Funny… despite his habit of turning down corners whenever he wished to mark his place, this one had a bookmark.

Sonnet twenty-eight…

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!  
And yet they seem alive and quivering  
Against thy tremulous hands which loose the string  
And let them drop down on my knee tonight.  
This said- he wished to have me in his sight  
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring  
To come and touch my hand… a simple thing,  
Yes I wept for it—this… the paper’s light…  
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed  
As if God’s future thundered on my past.  
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled  
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.  
And this… O Love, thy words have ill availed  
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

I took several breaths, rapid and then deep, and tried to stop my hands from shaking. With all the little folds he left in books, the scrap of an envelope that marked the page could be no coincidence. There was no damage done to my car and no guile in his approaching me. All the evidence I had pulled me in two very different directions.

I went and let the trembling take me. I let tears come that never fell when I first destroyed us. I was no pretty sight, but my mind was no pretty place to be, with fresh confusion pressing in on me. Either I had misread our fight badly, or this was a new and unforgivable torment. I was trained to expect the worst, but oh… oh, I prayed for the best. For the first time in so many years, twenty-three or more, I prayed for the best. And when I knew the base was sleeping, I collected myself to go for an answer.


	9. I Never Want to Let You Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Sniper finally winds up with the Spy in his arms...

I just about jumped out of my skin when he knocked at my door. Don’t know why—I’d been hoping for him to come, hadn’t I?

“You left your bookmark.” It was all he said when I opened the door.

“Never use one.” I shrugged, stepping to one side.

“I thought so,” He rushed in, his arms around me the second the door was closed, and then my back was up against it and my front was up against him.

“I thought you found out about me,” I gasped the words out between his lips.

“I thought you hated me,” Spy swallowed them.

I shoved us off the door, wasn’t barely two steps from there to the foot of the bed and then we were falling onto it.

“Heaven help me, I tried.”

I could have laughed. I could have cried. It all wanted to come at once and maybe it all cancelled each other out, because I didn’t do either, but somehow even though I’d landed on him just a second ago, I was on my back and him on top of me.

He kissed me like I was the answer to something and I kissed back even though I didn’t rightly know what the question was. His hands were shaking on the front of my shirt, fabric stretching and bunching in tight fists and I could see the flex of tendons through his gloves.

“Please,”

“Yeah.”

“Please.” Again, like a prayer. Again, with hardly any sound, and again with none, until it was just the puff of his breath and his lips moving, and my hands were everywhere, unsure, but I nodded and promised all the same.

“I thought it was a joke.” I admitted. “Or a threat. I’m sorry.”

“Do not make me leave this again.” He whispered, ragged, into my throat. “Because I will not. If you touch me like that… I will not. How did an outback survivalist assassin ever develop a taste for Barrett-Browning?”

“Lot of time to read in the outback.” I shrugged and stroked his face, petted over his back and shoulder and arm, touched his leg. “What will they do if we’re caught?”

“We won’t be.” He promised, as if it was ever a promise we could make for certain.

“You don’t know my name.”

“You don’t know mine.” He looked down at me, eyes serious. “Is that a problem?”

I thought about it. I didn’t know his name… but I knew what it felt like to coast across the desert over a hundred miles per hour with the wind in my face, and I knew the ending of The Mousetrap, and I knew he was a war orphan. I knew the scent of his aftershave and the taste of the barrel of his gun and I knew what he looked like when there was half a moon out and loneliness written in the lines of his frown.

“I don’t know what you look like under there.” I said, fingertips brushing his cheek.

He smiled and caught my hand. “Not on a first date, cheri.”

“Yeah? Seemed like you were ready to go pretty far for a moment there.”

There was a little out-of-place shyness to him then. “You know… this weekend, I think the Engineer has got his hands on something with Harold Lloyd. And no one will be looking at my car. If you were interested, in a proper date.”

“Sure. Wouldn’t say no to an improper one, course…” I left his mask alone and ran my hands up his arms.

He let me reel him in for a kiss, and this time… this time it was perfect.

Maybe my frame of reference isn’t so big, but I thought so, anyway. There was no pushing away and no anger in it, and that was enough for me, and if I was rubbish at kissing, he didn’t mind it.

“Filthy bushman…” He chuckled, his mouth wet against mine, and I licked at his bottom lip, bit down just enough to make him swat at my shoulder and laugh and kiss me back, push me down and kiss me…

“Bloody spook.” I whispered.

When he caught my eye, I could almost read his intent. It was some nebulous sexual thing just past the edge of my understanding, whatever he meant to communicate. It made me feel like a cornered rabbit and happy to be one.

“There are things I might do, on a first date. If it is an improper one.” He teased.

“Yeah?”

He slid down, crouching over my lap, his hands on my belt, his lips forming a single word with a tortuous careful slowness.

“Oui.”

“Well if you like,” I said weakly.

“Of course… once I have a taste for you, you might find me very difficult to get rid of.” He warned me with a smirk. “Do you still want me to… taste you?”

I nodded, lightheaded. I’d never had another man between my legs, much as I might have fantasized from time to time. Well, no one can prove a fantasy, you can’t be prosecuted for… for a wet dream now and then or the kind of things that come to mind when you’re having a wank. Even if you’re in bed with a girl and you think of someone else—someone less girl—As long as it’s all in your head, no one has to know. This is real.

It could be worse than everything I’ve spent my life being afraid of, if anyone found out about this, this concrete thing I’m doing that’s against all the rules.

But the shyness is replaced by a far more Spy-like overconfidence and he looks me up and down and licks his lips like he knows he’s worth the pains, chuckles soundlessly and runs a fingertip along the seam of my fly.

“Oh yeah.” I said.

His fingers closed on the zip.


	10. I Only Want to Be With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (and for all the readers who have suffered through the mounting sexual tension... here you go) Spy gets Sniper on an improper date.

“Thought you didn’t do this to your seats.” He smirked.

“Shut up.” I rubbed against him with the heel of my hand, feeling him grow harder, more insistent, grinding back up into my touch.

Too risky, sadly, to try it at the little ‘drive in’ my team had created against the wall of the base—they rarely looked the other way, but if they did it would be disastrous enough just having him in my car. Too risky to go into the nearest city large enough to have a real theater—suppose anyone who knew what either of us was saw us there together? And no telling where the companies’ eyes and ears are…

In the middle of the desert, though, parked out on a lonely cliffside to watch the sunset… well… who would be the wiser?

“Yer teasin’ me,” He groaned, his hand grabbing mine when I provided too little stimulation.

“Your accent is always so atrocious when you get like this.” I said lightly, but I was nice enough to cup the bulge firmly, to start a rolling sort of massage.

“My accent? Least I don’t forget what bloody language I’m speaking.”

“Because you only speak one.” I pointed out, abandoning my efforts long enough to get his pants open.

“You’re downright impossible to understand when you’re getting a proper fucking.” He leaned over to whisper against my ear. “Half the time I don’t know what you’re begging me to do… Seems like I usually manage a pretty good job of it anyway.”

I pulled my glove off, slowly, with my teeth. I couldn’t help grinning a little as I did it, either… the way his eyes were glued to me was nice enough, the strangled little groan was heaven.

“Oh, you like that?” I slipped a finger into his mouth, to let him tease me back a little, with his tongue and the edge of his teeth, and long pulls of highly suggestive suction. “Mm… I do have my upholstery to worry about, though…”

“Don’t you dare,” He huffed, pulling my hand away from his mouth. I extracted it from his gentle-enough grip before he could try guiding me where he wanted me, and he whined, a sound of pure frustrated lust. “So help me, you bloody spook, if you say another word about your upholstery I’ll drag you outside and fuck you over the bonnet…”

“Oh no.” I smirked, pulling a silk handkerchief out of my pocket. “Then I should worry about my paint job. Suppose someone saw?”

He snorted, and I trailed the very edge of the handkerchief over the head of his cock.

“You’re gonna be the death of me…” He chuckled, turning to kiss me.

“Just a little. I suppose if I am very careful not to make a mess, I can help you with that…” I stroked him through the silk, a few long, steady pumps to get him nice and ready, just until I could feel a spot of dampness spreading through the fabric when my thumb swept circles over the tip. Enough to save me a little time and trouble of being twisted around in the seat to reach, but once he was leaking, I did manage to get into a good position to suck him off.

I swallowed him down until my nose was pressed hard, flattening on the pubic bone, hair tickling at me but largely ignored. I guided his hand to the back of my head, to hold me in place, to use me as he saw fit… It was an awkward position, the two of us sitting side-by-side in the relatively small confines of my car, but I didn’t really notice the discomfort, not when I had the smell of him and the taste of him, and the sound of his breath growing ragged around harsh swears and gentle pleas. Funny how my name could sound like either one.

He came, choking on a breathy ‘fuck’, his hand holding me in place more gently than he needed to, until that became a gentle massage to the nape of my neck as I licked and wiped him clean, keeping every trace of my spit and his come off of the seat.

The handkerchief was soaking and musky, and I put it back in my pocket anyway—there was nowhere else for it to go. He slid a hand into my lap and nuzzled at my neck once it was put away.

“Can I return the favour?”

“I don’t have anything else to clean up with…” I said, although a good part of me was willing to ignore that.

“Aw, I’ll take good care of ya.” He squeezed my hip. “I could still lay you over the bonnet of your car, suck you off out there. No one around for miles… Promise I won’t make a mess of your paint job, love, I’ll swallow every last drop you give me…”

“Well…” I smiled, as if I could really refuse… my head was still buzzing with sex, and he was so good at convincing me…

I didn’t actually let him lay me down on the hood of my car, but I leaned against the door while he knelt, his mouth on me, eager, so eager… to please, to experience, to love… Kneeling on the ground meant bringing more dust into the car, but dust could be vacuumed out, dust wouldn’t cause any raised eyebrows at the car wash. Dust found a way in no matter what you did, and it was a very small price to pay for being able to watch his face as he moaned around me and grabbed my ass and squeezed, urging me to thrust into his mouth, his swallowing throat…

It was teasing and tenderness both, when after I spilled my release down that throat, he sucked me clean as he could and kissed the head of my wilted cock with that crooked little smile…

“How’d I do?” He asked, as if he didn’t know, and I offered him my hand as he pulled himself up off the ground.

I pulled my balaclava off, desert breeze chilling the skin that was never exposed to it, the day’s sweat evaporating instantly from my face but staying in my hair, keeping it spiked in awkward disarray.

I watched his eyes flicker across my face, hungrily memorizing details.

“Can I kiss you?” He cupped my cheek.

“But of course,” I’d never balked at it before, and he had sucked me off a few times, as I had for him. He was… unused to it, at first, but never what you could call fussy over such things.

I pushed into his hand, he leaned in to meet me, his tongue sliding against mine. I placed my hands on his waist and let him lean me back, let him kiss me for all either of us was worth.

“Glad I didn’t disappoint,” I murmured, laughing.

“Never.” He nuzzled at my throat. “Never.”


End file.
